China’s ‘Queen of Trail Running’ Yao says sports can provide a different life
Every weekend, Peng Yunxing eats breakfast around 10 am, then heads out alone to herd her family’s 20 buffaloes to a nearby hillside meadow where they graze.
The 12-year-old, who lives in a mountain village in Mangshi, Yunnan province, stays to watch over them until they are full, then herds them back down the hill, locking them into the cattle pen by around 6 pm.
Most of her time herding is spent running. “I have to run to gather the cattle,” she explained.
“They spread far apart across the hillside, some on one side, some the other. I dash back and forth to corral them all into one group.”
Going downhill demands even more running. “The buffaloes rush toward the river at the foot of the mountain to wallow after a long day of grazing, so they bolt fast and I have to keep up with them!”
Channeling that boundless energy and ability to quickly traverse tricky mountainside terrain, Yunxing recently entered her first 10-kilometer trail race, in Hebei province’s rain-soaked, muddy Chongli mountains, supported by Boundless Girls, a charity project that empowers young girls through sport.
She may be no stranger to steep climbs, slippery mud-covered descents and jagged rocky trails, but it was the first time she’d had a crowd cheering her on at the end of them.
“I was overjoyed,” she said. “So many people cheered for me. I knew I had to sprint all the way to the finish!”
She never called it training, she called it chores, but those weekend miles with the buffaloes had been preparing her for this all along.
In April, Boundless Girls, initiated by sportswear giant Nike, co-launched a seven-week campus running challenge with the China Foundation for Rural Development to help rural youth build consistent exercise habits.
The program attracted over 60,000 children from nearly 200 schools, more than 40,000 of whom were girls.
Each week, participants received a card to stamp each day they ran.
“Before, when I finished a run, it was just over. There was nothing to remember it by,” said Yunxing.
“But with this running log, I feel a real sense of accomplishment.”
Among all the participants, Yunxing and 11 other girls earned the opportunity to receive trail running guidance from Yao Miao, often hailed as China’s “Queen of Trail Running”, and together they completed the 10-kilometer race at the Chongli 168 Ultra Trail on July 12.
Yunxing said the skills she learned from Yao will stay with her, even when she’s back herding cattle.
“The uphill techniques she taught us are really useful,” Yunxing said.
“The hills back home are not high, but steep, so going up is tough. Those skills will help save a lot of energy.”
Yao is the first and only Asian athlete to claim three Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc (UTMB) titles across different event categories.
She currently ranks world No 1 in the women’s 50km category on the International Trail Running Association (ITRA) performance index.
Earlier this month, Yao won the women’s title at the 2026 UTMB Val d’Aran Camins d’Her (Iron Roads) race, an event officially classified in the 100km category, but with an actual course length of 110km and an elevation gain of 6,400 meters. She finished in an impressive time of 13 hours, four minutes and 34 seconds.
She will travel to Chamonix, France, later this month to prepare for the 101km Courmayeur-Champex-Chamonix (CCC) race at the UTMB World Series Finals in late August.
Running to recharge
Taking the time to train with the children between the two ultra-distance races, Yao found that it helped her unwind.
“Running with the kids was more like a moment of recharging for me,” Yao recalled.
“I deliberately slowed down my pace during the race. I stopped to take in the surroundings, enjoy the scenery along the way and watch the running form of the kids.”
On May 22, Yao traveled to a primary school in Yunnan’s Ninglang county, where she ran and played games with nearly 1,800 girls participating in the campus running challenge. She also shared her own life story and trail running experiences with them.
“Children in remote mountainous areas have very few opportunities to play sports, and the options are extremely limited,” said Yao.
“I think introducing trail running, or even just running, to them is a brand-new experience, even if it only plants a small seed in their hearts, or makes them more curious to see the world beyond their mountains.
“Everyone is curious about the future and about new environments, but they’re also quite shy and hesitant to express themselves,” Yao noted.
“They don’t know that they can do sports, and they don’t know what kind of different life they could have. And running — so simple, so healthy — is exactly the kind of sport we can bring to more of them.”
Wang Yinqin, a 16-year-old participant who frequently wins school running competitions, was inspired by Yao.
“Seeing Yao, I realized that running can make a person shine so brightly and be so impressive,” she said. “I want to see if I can follow the path of becoming a trail runner too.”
Growing up in a mountain village in Liupanshui, Guizhou province, as the youngest of six children, Yao saw much of her younger self in the girls.
Yao grew up carrying a bamboo basket into the hills, digging for potatoes and foraging for food to feed her family. Back then, she wanted nothing more than to escape.
Today, the mountains she once fled have become her stage. She is now widely recognized as one of the most influential female athletes in the trail running world.
“I share a similar background with these children. In fact, my situation was probably even worse than theirs,” Yao said. “But I made it out. I believe they can have more confidence in themselves, too.”
She also expressed her gratitude to her middle school PE teacher.
“He was the one who gave me the chance to start running, and he’s the reason I’ve come this far.”
Yunxing, whose previous dream was to become a doctor, found a new aspiration after hearing Yao’s story of how running changed her life.
“I want to be a PE teacher now,” Yunxing said.
For now, though, there are still buffaloes to be herded, steep hills to climb and miles to cover before the sun goes down.
But, these days, when she runs, she understands it’s much more than just chores.
